Summer Solstice

Today marked the summer solstice. "The first day of summer," announced the radio. There was a time when men need not have been reminded. Many diverse cultures venerated the day, marking the high point of the sun's power over darkness. Our paths have led us far from those agrarian stargazers, and today we measure out our time not with the gentle ebb and flow of rivers, or the steady march of constellations, but rather with atomic clocks and digital watches, and the same Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter which once reflected the eternal cycle of life now dispassionately demarcate baseball, basketball, football, and hockey seasons. Who now weeps for Tammuz? I cry out with Hamlet: "For oh, for oh, the hobby-horse is forgot."